Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask His Majesty's Government, further to the report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Brain Tumours, Pathway to a Cure – breaking down the barriers, published on 28 February 2023, what is the expected timescale to develop a strategy for adequately resourcing discovery, translational and clinical research into brain tumours as recommended by the report; and whether they will commit to ring fencing the recommended £110 million for this resourcing.

The Department of Health and Social Care welcomes the All-Party Parliamentary Group report, recommendations of which continue to be worked through with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, UK Research and Innovation and the Medical Research Council (MRC), and with the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).

The report recommended action by the research funding agencies on coordinating activities and making funding available. We are taking steps to ensure that funders work closely together to coordinate work along the translational pathway, from the discovery and early translational science typically supported by the MRC, feeding through to the applied health and care research funded by the NIHR.

It is not usual practice to ring-fence funds for particular topics or conditions. As with other Government funders of health research, the NIHR does not allocate funding for specific disease areas. The level of research spend in a particular area is driven by factors including scientific potential and the number and scale of successful funding applications.